The term “design thinking” goes back to the 1960s but really gained steam through the work of innovation company IDEO. In his blog on design thinking, CEO and president Tim Brown defines it as “matching people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and viable as a business strategy.” The key skills used to make this happen are empathy with the people who experience those needs, creativityin coming up with ideas to address them and rationalityto choose and form the most viable and feasible ideas.

With Windows 10 we’re actively addressing modern security threats with advancements to strengthen identity protection and access control, information protection, and threat resistance. With this release we will have nearly everything in place to move the world away from the use of single factor authentication options, like passwords.

We are delivering robust data loss prevention right into the platform itself.

Windows 10 protects user credentials when breaches occur in the data center. It protects users from theft when devices are compromised and it renders phishing attacks for identities almost completely ineffective. It’s a solution that offers benefits for both businesses and consumers, and one that provides all of the convenience of a password along with security that is truly enterprise-grade. It represents the destination in our journey to eliminate the use of single factor identity options like passwords. We believe this solution brings identity protection to a new level as it takes multi-factor security which today is limited to solutions such as smartcards and builds it right into the operating system and device itself, eliminating the need for additional hardware security peripherals.

Once enrolled, devices themselves become one of two factors that are required for authentication. The second factor will be a PIN or biometric, such as fingerprint.

Users will be able to enroll each of their devices with these new credentials, or they can enroll a single device, such as a mobile phone, which will effectively become their mobile credential. It will enable them to sign-in into all of their PC’s, networks, and web services as long as their mobile phone is nearby. In this case, the phone, using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi communication, will behave like a remote smartcard and it will offer two factor authentication for both local sign-in and remote access.

Information protection:

Protection of corporate data in Windows 10 enables automatic encryption of corporate apps, data, email, website content and other sensitive information, as it arrives on the device from corporate network locations. And when users create new original content, this data protection solution helps users define which documents are corporate versus personal. If desired, companies can even designate all new content created on the device as corporate by policy.

This post may sound pessimistic. But for somebody who is working with a ton of people on a daily basis, all I can say is – the world is not a good place. It’s scary. It’s all fine and dandy when you tell people what they want to hear, not otherwise.

If you are looking to the world to provide happiness, you are living in delusion. I’ve learnt a few things –

1. Small teams deliver the best products. Smaller the better. As small as even 1 person.

2. Try to minimize talk, emails, chit-chat and idle gossip. Spend more time reading and writing.

3. Spend more time with yourself, learn to enjoy solitude. You are only in control of yourself. The corporate world is full of hypocrisy. Don’t fall for it. Be it any company, it’s all a game plan and we are players in the game. We abolished slavery, but it re-surfaced with a modern version called “employment”. How is this any different? It’s intellectual slavery where you are physically taken care of, but intellectually subdued. Everybody lives in fear. Everybody is trying to put their best face on. If this is not hypocrisy, what is? We leave behind our natural selves at home and head to office. It brings tears to my eyes that all our years of education has reduced us to robotic beings so we can earn a few bucks and take care of family. As Leo Tolstoy said, “I feel cheated by life”. This is not fair. Apart from the fact that I have given a few jobs to people in need, I don’t know what else I should be happy about.

4. Avoid confrontation. It’s not worth it. Nobody listens what they don’t want to hear. What is worse – sometimes people acknowledge the problem. But don’t do anything about it. People in power wish to think that problems will magically resolve themselves. No they don’t. They fester. And no other industry is as bad as the IT industry when it comes to “passing the buck”. And emails have made it easy. Just forward the problem along with the email! How clever. Email replies sometimes have nothing to do with the original email – because people want to escape. There’s even a term for it – “escapism”. I’m glad these guys are not doctors, they’d get people killed.

5. I learnt something shocking while talking to somebody – I have no words to put it. In short it was this – people think whether it’s worth replying to an email. Think how bad the IT world has gotten. The sender has no clue that this is what the recipient thinks of his/her email. It’s a sad reality. An entire generation will rot doing junk work if they don’t think big and don’t take risks. As one of my colleagues put it, it’s called “brain atrophy”.